Git is a distributed, open-source version control system (VCS) that enables you to store code, track revision history, merge code changes, and revert to earlier code version when needed.

Git Basics

Git stores your source code and its full development history locally in a repository. You can create a copy of your source code, known as a branch, which you can then work on in parallel to the main version. When you are ready, you can commit changes to save your progress. Or you can merge your branch back into the main version. Every time you commit, Git takes a snapshot of your work and compares it to previous versions with a viewable operation called a diff. If there's been a change from previous commits, Git stores a new snapshot in the repository.

What Are the Benefits of Git?

Git has several key benefits:

Historical Change Tracking – You can review a graph of how your commits have changed over time, see when and by whom changes were made, and revert to a previous commit if needed. This history makes it easier to identify and fix bugs.

Work as a Team – You can easily share your code with teammates for review before you commit or merge back to the main working branch. Additionally, the branching and review capabilities enable simultaneous development. Multiple people can work on the same file and resolve differences later.

Improve Team Speed & Productivity – Git makes it easy for your team to track changes to your code. Now you can focus on writing code instead of spending time tracking and merging different versions across your team. Additionally, Git performs computations and stores your main repository locally, making it quicker on most operations than a centralized VCS.

Availability and Redundancy – Git is a distributed VCS, meaning there is no single, central place where everything is stored. In a distributed system, there are multiple backups in the event that you need one. This approach also means that you can work offline and commit your changes when you’re ready.

Git Is the Industry Standard – Due to its popularity, Git is supported by many integrated development environments (IDEs) and many popular developer tools including AWS CodeCommit, Jenkins, and Travis. There are many free Git resources available, such as the Git open source page.

Using Git with AWS

You can use AWS CodeCommit to work with Git. CodeCommit is a fully managed source control service that makes it easy to host secure and highly scalable private Git repositories. CodeCommit eliminates the need to operate your own source control system or worry about scaling its infrastructure. You can use CodeCommit to securely store anything from source code to binaries, and it works seamlessly with your existing Git tools.